The fundamental transformation of America that President Barack Obama promised is in progress.

Not so very long ago, we were nurtured to strive for excellence and success by examining the lives of men like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and other entrepreneurs. Today successful wealthy men are labeled greedy “one percenters” who have deprived the remaining 99 percent of the prosperity to which they are entitled.

“Rich” is equated with evil, though the looters are ambivalent about the exact amount. The term “individualist” has become synonymous with “sociopath” or selfish. An overzealous compassion has created burgeoning unsustainable entitlements that make no distinction between “needs” and “wants.”

I am confounded by the number of people who welcome this transformation and voted for it. I am dismayed at their lack of intellectual honesty when they assert the top ten percent of earners are not paying a “fair share” when in reality they account for 70 percent of the revenue collected. How much more should they pay to accommodate the new paradigm of “fairness?” “As much as the government needs” is the answer.

Author John Steinbeck said: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor do not see themselves as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Being rich or being poor in America is not a fixed state. It is a function of mobility in a system where all are moving in one direction or another.

Redistribution does not lift those at a lower level to a higher economic level. Instead it takes from those who have achieved, discouraging their ideas, abilities and ambitions assuring a lower form of equality for all through the elimination of the motivation to achieve.

No amount of government redistribution can overcome the ultimate poverty of spirit.